Paul says that Peter’s actions are nothing less than hypocrisy. Peter has changed his attitude and behavior toward Gentile Christians after the visit from the “men from James.” The first verb (ὑποστέλλω) is a military term and has the sense of retreating to an “inconspicuous position” (Witherington, Galatians, 154). In Acts 20:27, Paul uses the verb to describe what he did not do – he did not “shrink back” from preaching the gospel in Ephesus in the face of persecution. The second verb (ἀφορίζω) has the meaning of separating into groups (the sheep and the goats in Matt 25:32, for example). Witherington takes this to mean that the word has a sense of ritual purity, and I might add it has an eschatological sense. At the end of the age, the Lord will separate those who will enter the kingdom from those who will not. If we are right that the political and religious situation in Judea was becoming increasingly apocalyptic, it is possible that these “men from James” were encouraging a separation of the Jews and the Gentiles in anticipation of a coming judgment.
The reason for Peter’s withdrawal from table fellowship is fear of the circumcision party, those Jews who insisted on circumcising Gentiles. There is at least the possibility (based on Galatians 6:12) that some Jews, such as the Zealots, were willing to use force to ensure Jewish traditions were being observed. If this is the case, then perhaps Peter’s fear is a real fear of persecution by the more zealous wing of the Jerusalem church. This is not a case of “the pastor is coming over, quick hide the beer bottles”! Peter and Barnabas may have withdrawn from fellowship to avoid a potentially violent reprisal from the “zealots” within Jewish Christianity.
Peter’s actions, therefore, are out of character and not in line with his beliefs nor the agreement that he reached with Paul in Galatians 2:1-10. Paul thinks Peter and Barnabas have “shrunk back” out of fear and need correction. While Peter is a hypocrite, Paul describes Barnabas as “led astray.” The verb συναπάγω has the sense of “carried away,’ he was fooled by the rhetoric of the “men from James.”
Witherington suggests that Barnabas found himself in a bad place because he was initially sent to Antioch by Jerusalem, and he could not go against the “orders” of the church that sent him to Antioch in the first place (Galatians, 157). His loyalty was to Jerusalem, the group with which he was associated from the earliest days (Acts 4), rather than to Paul and the Gentile mission. The Gentile mission is not Barnabas’ commission; it is Paul’s. All of the Jews in the Antioch church join with Peter and Barnabas in withdrawing from fellowship with the Gentile believers. This suggests that a church-wide split has occurred, likely caused by the “men from James.”
Paul publicly confronted Peter because his “conduct was not in line with the truth.” This confrontation was “before them all,” which may mean that Paul waited until the church assembled. Parallel to the private meeting in Jerusalem, Paul chose to bring this issue to the whole assembly. The accusation against Peter that he is not living in accordance to what he knows is the truth, the agreement of Gal 2:1-10, for example. The agitators in the Galatian church, on the other hand, were described with military terms. They are spies and agitators who are outside of the truth of the gospel to begin with. Peter knows the truth and is not acting in accordance with it., The agitators do not even know the gospel.
Paul’s point is that if Peter and the Jewish Christians withdraw from the Gentile Christians, then there is no unity in the body of Christ. As Paul will point out later in the letter, there is no Jew or Greek in the Body of Christ; we are all members together “in Christ.” To separate into two bodies, a Jewish and a Gentile one, totally misses the point of a “joint-body” as Paul describes in Ephesians 2.
What is at stake here is the nature of the Gospel. If Paul loses this argument, then Gentiles will continue to be “second-class believers” in the eyes of some conservative Jewish believers.
Although the issues are different, how do contemporary churches create boundaries that exclude some types of Christians from fellowship or consider them as second-class Christians? Perhaps some of the boundaries are important (the men from James thought circumcision was critical to being a follower of Jesus), but others may not be. How can we disagree on the boundaries without compromising the unity of the Body of Christ?
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Phillip, you are sadly using the wrong Greek text of Gal 2:12b. As Stephen Carlson and David Yoon have shown, most of the best manuscripts (including the oldest one) have “he came”, not “they came”. “He came” is also the harder reading, so should be preferred. With the correct text we get the following sequence.
1. Peter ate with gentiles.
2. Men from James visited Antioch. They were the men from Judea of Acts 15:1.
3. Jerusalem conference. Paul agrees to focus on evangelising Gentiles, so that Peter can focus on Jews. The leaders write the Jerusalem decree and point out that they had not endorsed the views of the men from James (Acts 15:24).
4. Peter came to Antioch and ate only with Jews. Paul called him on it.
Peter’s eating with Gentiles was before the conference because it explains why Paul must (with either text) skip back in time in 2:12.
So, it was not the arrival of the men from James that triggered Peter’s withdrawal. It was the new division of labour between Peter and Paul. Peter had to be a “Jew to the Jews” to win the Jews.
There was no split between Paul and the Jerusalem church leaders. They had the same friends and supporters during their lives and in subsequent generations. And Acts, which mentions a lot of conflict among Christians, is against any such split.
Please adopt Carlson’s insight, or show that he is wrong.
It is challenging to look at this issue and compare it to the Christian church today because of the major differences between the law and Judaism. In chapter one of Thinking Through Paul, Longenecker discusses that Christianity back then was more of an adaptation to Judaism in that it was a completely new way of looking at Jesus for the Jews and the law isn’t necessary. However, this is quite different for the gentile believers. They can become part of God’s family without being a Jew first. This is the main core of the Galatians letter; that the law is not necessary for salvation, because it never was. Salvation is possible only by faith and Christ; the law is not a factor in that. Therefore, gentiles can be saved. Paul touches on this in Galatians 3 with the example of Abraham and his salvation through faith. Paul calls Peter out heavily on this matter because it was causing division in the Galatian church and body of Christ. I think looking at the church today, there are many divisions based on very trivial things. Some of these things include music, personality, tattoos, piercings, not accepting someone’s past, dress, different type of lifestyle (but not ungodly), politics, etc. It is easy to put up barriers against others and reject them based on difference, yet this is hypocritical of the church who claims they want diversity, yet cannot accept other people’s differences. If it not motivated by sin, why should a difference between people be an issue? Paul again touches on this division based on the unessentials in the church in Romans 14. We have to continually come back to the reason in which united us in the first place.
At one church I attended, there was a sophomore girl in high school who got pregnant, the inner city girl who is homeless and the one boy in the back with dirty clothes on. I remember looking them and seeing myself. I saw them once and that was it, and after that Left as well. This is what I compare James thinking circumcision was “key” to being a follower of Jesus. No one said it but you could tell what the words they were thinking were about those three individuals. It’s a quiet “we don’t want you here). I think that nowadays many Contemporary churches create boundaries by pushing out the “too broken” of people. There are many contemporary churches who push the hard issues away and remain surface level with their congregation. A lot of contemporary churches would place these three “kind of people in that second-class Christian category. (Most of the churches I have attended). I think certain boundaries like not cussing, not being disturbing during worship, and even the kind of population might be the kind of boundaries Churches set for themselves are okay. I think we can disagree on the boundaries without compromising the Body of Christ by remembering 1 Timothy 3:16, and that all the scripture (no matter what church we attend or place we are) is “God breathed”. As long as we take the God breathed scripture and remain strong in that word, boundaries don’t have to compromise the Body of Christ as a whole.
In today’s world, we often end up creating boundaries and pushing people out of the church, and I think we do this much more often than we realize. This can happen to people who are in different social or economic classes, to people who are different races, and to different age groups. I really like what you said about how churches often push out those who are “too broken”. I think that another way that the church discriminates today is through different doctrinal ideas. There are so many church denominations today, from Baptist to Methodist, Reformed and even non-denominational. We may not relate this with discrimination, because it is not the typical thing that we would think of, such as race or gender. Sadly, however, many Christians do discriminate based off of denomination. I have met many people who claim that those who belong to other denominations aren’t Christians, because they don’t believe exactly the same things, or they think that other denominations are “lesser” than theirs. This is so sad! While there are certainly churches out there who have fallen off the path of Christianity, there are many who, at their core, are good Christian churches – they may just have different opinions on certain topics. As April said, there are certain boundaries that we are able to disagree on, simply because we are not given direct answers on them in the Bible. As long as we are not going directly against what the Bible tells us, there are certain grey areas that allow us to sort of come to our own conclusions – and I think that we need to be careful that we are not discriminating based off of those ideas.
People would be hypocrites in the body of Christ if their life never change in Christ and they were to tell others to change their live and grow. Yes, no one is perfect, but it easy to tell when you and others are not putting in the effort. It is like what James says to be doers and not only hearers of the word. So, it is good to keep others accountable, but at the same time to be living a life of Christ that reflects to others. There are many consumers in the Church today, who show up and hear the word, but they never put into practice and that may influence many members in that body to behave the same way, which they would too become hypocrites. In Galatians 2:13-14 Paul mentions the Jews joined in the hypocrisy and even led Barnabas into it as well. I think this shows that it can be easy to lead others into hypocrisy without even fully recognizing that you are doing it just by your choice of lifestyle.
Contemporary churches create boundaries by not only carrying different beliefs, but also by practicing different rituals, and slightly varying doctrine. While the core of the Christian church is universally the gospel, there are many different denominations who all interpret the Bible slightly differently; thus, division is created. Division can also occur within a single church when ideas, beliefs, and practices differ. For example, something as simple as choice of music, (something beautiful, designed to bring people together in praise) can cause huge disagreements within the congregation along with worship style and intensity. Just as disagreement and controversy occurs in our churches today, Dr. Long discussed how it happened within some of the first churches. Longenecker gives two examples in Galatians chapter 2 where the church faces controversy. In the first example, Paul is speaking out against the belief that new believers should be required to be circumcised in order to receive salvation (Gal. 2:1-10). He addresses this issue not only for those who believed that they must be circumcised, but also to foster unity within the church. In the second example, Paul “calls out” Peter in front of the church when he sits separately from the Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-14). Paul believed that this action could not only cause disunity among believers but could also cause false beliefs to spread in addition to making Gentile believers feel as though they were second class citizens (Long). While the issues that the church faces today may be different than those in Biblical times, we can learn a lot from the importance that Paul placed on unity among believers.
I am not sure I felt guilty about eating the dog; I did not know it personally. Still it was weird.
P. Long’s post upon the betrayal or hypnotical actions of Peter when a visit from “men of James” came long provoked a realization. As describe in the original post, these men are described as zealots who were willing to use force to ensure the Jewish law was being followed. Uniquely, I draw upon the fact that because Paul describes himself in Acts 22 the past for being zealous for the law, that these Jewish zealots and Paul perhaps would have gotten along quite well in the past. Peter shrinks away from gentile fellowship, which was against Jewish law, understandingly if these Jewish zealots were as zealous for the law as Paul once was. Upon the topic of P. Long’s questions on what people does the contemporary church views as second class Christian may be Christians that go through various struggles such as homosexuality, drug addiction, divorce, and possibly those who seek professional counseling. These groups are often viewed, unbiblically, as second rate because the church has placed a value system upon sins that suggests some sins are greater than others. Another, unbiblical, possible reason of being viewed second rate is because these Christians have not yet gained freedom from their sin in the practical sense. We all struggle with sins but for whatever reason, these are the struggles that when we learn of them react in judgement and break community with them instead of coming alongside them to help lift their yoke and point them to Christ.
Peter’s attitude in the lens of Paul was one of selfishness and hypocrisy. However, the reality is that we do not have Peter’s side of the story. There may be a great deal of information that Paul neither knows nor desires to know to help make his case. However, this important detail means there are necessary details that are clearly missing from the narrative that Paul is giving.
With that said, there can still be a bit of reconciliation that should have taken place on Peter’s part. Clearly his actions are not in a way where he was wholly devoted to the church as a whole – whether Jew or Gentile – because he allowed fear to be fed deeply into his heart.
When reading this passage, as well as many passages in the Gospel, there is often a common misconception to judge Peter’s actions. Rather than this, we should examine ourselves. How often do believers today live in a way which does not show the Gospel to the world? How often to we allow the influence of more strict believers to place in a bind about who we interact with and how we share the message of Christ?
Considering how often the issue of Jew compared to Gentile appears in the Epistles, it should not be surprising that it will even cause division among those who are seen as the leaders of the church. It should also be a challenge to us to strive for a spirit of unity, even when others do not.
All too often churches split over issues as minor and trivial as the color of the carpet. We sometimes can get so wrapped up in the little and trivial things that we miss what is truly important. For a long time, card games, movie theaters, and dancing were seen as sinful and an atrocity for Christians to take part in, but why? There were no verses from scripture saying “thou shalt not vieweth a film in a darkened room” or “anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved… except those who go out dancing.” What made so many Christians so against these things? I feel like these convictions were much like that of the men from James. These agitators did not have any reason of why the Gentile Christians should be circumcised other than it was of the Law. Paul combats this belief in saying that Christians were no longer held to the Law, rather they should follow the Law of Christ and serve one another in love. One interesting factor in all of this is it is very possible that the “men from James” or the agitators were not even Christians! Galatians 1:6-7 says, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—not that there is another one, but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.” When Paul speaks about how the people of the church had turned from Christ and accepted this “different gospel,” this could very well imply that these men held completely different beliefs than the early Christians.
How are Christians of today supposed to find a balance between keeping the Law of Christ and the “little traditions/laws” that have been added to Christianity over time? What is the balance between Legalism and Anti-nomianism? In many ways, this is up to one’s convictions and what they feel most comfortable doing. If someone feels convicted about playing cards or dancing, then don’t push their buttons; go somewhere else to play cards and dance. As Paul said, we should keep to Law of Christ and serve one another in love.
Peter’s hypocrisy is an extremely unfortunate part of scripture, as Peter fails in his mission yet again even after being restored by Christ before He ascended back to the Father in heaven. It brings up questions of why Christ would choose Peter as an apostle knowing (if you believe that God has middle knowledge) that he would fail Him at his crucifixion and then later after the ascension by refusing to participate in table fellowship with Gentiles. Of course, some people blow Peter’s actions out of proportion, believing that Peter refused to evangelize Gentiles at all. Though Peter has a generally good reputation in the modern Church, he – more so than the other disciples – has more mistakes that the modern Church can learn from, which is probably a reason that God would wish for those stories to be in the canon of scripture. Because of Paul’s rebuke of Peter’s mistakes, biblical readers can understand the importance of fellowshipping with all types of Christians. There is no Jew nor Gentile; no first nor second class Christians. All Christians are equal in worth, and no one Christian can claim to be holier than any other. All people are corrupt in this life. The idea of second-class believers is a dangerous one as it could lead to pride among those who consider themselves ‘first-class’ and could also lead to corruption and oppression within the hierarchy of the church. The church was never meant to be bureaucratic, but rather a fellowship of equals who – as the first Spirit-indwelled believers did at Pentecost – shared all they had and lived lives for each other and not themselves.
Leave aside the aspect of splitting the church over doctrine issue. Look at it with the lens of personality. Peter was sensitive to social ostracism. He was brave against a soldier in the garden but cowardly against a servant girl.in the courtyard. His personality remained the same even after the resurrection of Jesus and even after receiving the Holy Spirit. It is the same with us. We can love Jesus with all our heart but it will not change us from an introvert to an extrovert. Whatever we do for Jesus we need to do it within the bounds of our personality. It is best to avoid situations that we know will be hard for someone with our personality. When it can’t be done we need to go into them mentally prepared and acknowledge we are lifting an especially heavy load.
One issue I have seen in the contemporary church is the issue of baptism. How they will only allow one to enter into church membership if baptized in their church, or how they have to be rebaptized by immersion if they were only sprinkled. It does make baptism lose its meaning if you keep having to do it every time you switch churches. I have also seen some Christians act shocked when someone is a believer and they have never been water baptized, although they would often agree that it is not necessary for salvation, except for possibly the Church of Christ, and the Roman Catholic Church. This issue alone can make some believers break fellowship and treat each other as second-class christians, despite us all having faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Philippians 2:14-15 encourages us to do things without “grumbling and disputing” to be blameless when compared to the wicked generation. How we handle theological issues in the church today needs to always come from a sense of a united mission, remembering that we are all equal in Christ (Galatians 3:28). If we are all equal in Christ, there is no reason for us to treat anyone else as a second class christian.
I would say that it depends on what kind of boundaries are being set and if they are different from have be done before. It would also depend on if the reasoning for the separation can be found in the Bible. There are churches that have been split down the middle over the smallest things like the carpet, the song that is sung, the music that is played and even the clothes that is worn by the church goers. Paul talks about how we are supposed to have unity but if we are too busy looking at our differences that we miss the unity of the body of Christ. The only thing that Paul lets cause separation in the church is sin and Jesus did the same and believers we should strive to be like Jesus as much as we can.
I am glad you decided to mention Ephesians in this blog. Unity within the body is a common theme in Paul’s epistles (Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Ephesians 3:6). He no longer sees Jew or gentiles as distinct categories, since they are all under the covenant of grace (Romans 8:1-4). This makes Peter’s actions towards the gentiles inexcusable. Paul rightly condemns it. After all, what benefit is their to following the law for those who are saved by grace? None (Galatians 5:4).
This means that Paul’s message of freedom from the law is true down to the foundation of the Christian faith (Galatians 2:16). So why do we continue to keep “laws” today. I think it stems from tradition. You were raised with a certain way of worshipping and certain beliefs and these shape your theology, liturgy and understanding of the church. But these rules also stem from a desire to live pure and honor God. We leave as cleanly as possible to live purely. We form rules to protect ourselves from harmful behavior or habits. We have liturgy because we want to honor God in the best way possible. Rules are not meant to hurt people, but they become hurtful when you value the rules over the person. It is difficult because we want to live purely, but we have to balance that with the fact that people have different beliefs.
I think Peter’s actions were deeply hypocritical and I’m glad the Apostle Paul called him out in front of everyone. Peter knew better, but he worried about what people would say about him. I think that is true of contemporary church these days. Paul said: “For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10) It is sad to say that sometimes we, (the body of Christ) divide over trivial things. This story reminds me of a popular black pastor named Jamal Bryant. He recently called out black pastors around the United States for “siding with the white man.” He feels like Charlie Kirk was a racist and he believes black Christians should have nothing to do with Turning Point USA; (a non-profit founded by Charlie Kirk) This is completely unbiblical. Paul says: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) There is also a group of false Christians known as the Hebrew Israelites. They claim black people are the only group capable of being saved. I’m personally sick and tired of people being racist towards white Christians. God has lifted up powerful men in the Kingdom from Europe, specifically England. (I’m a big John Wesely guy) Moral of the story, we still see a lot of racism in the church today along with cultural divides. We should endeavor to keep unity in the spirit. (Ephesians 4:3)